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Most photographs reproduce acceptably on positive microfilm or microfiche but lack the clarity on xerographic copies made from the microfilm. For an additional charge, 35mm slides of 6”x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations that cannot be reproduced satisfactorily by xerography. 8709999 Gainer, Kim Dian PROLEGOMENON TO PIERS PLOWMAN: LATIN VISIONS OF THE OTHERWORLD FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1987 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mi 48106 PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check markV . 1. Glossy photog raphs or pages_____ 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print______ 3. Photographs with dark background_____ 4. Illustrations are poor copy______ 5. Pages with black marks, not original copy______ 6. 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Other ________________________________________________________________________ University Microfilms International PROLEGOMENON TO PIERS PLOUMANI LATIN VISIONS OF THE OTHERWORLD FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Kim Dian Gainer, B.A., M.A. # * * * The Ohio State University 1987 Dissertation Committee: Approved by A.K. Brown L. Kiser AdVM'ser C.K. Zacher Department of English To Chariie ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To Alan Brown, thank you for your assistance in translating several puzzling Latin passages. To Lisa Kiser, thank you -for directing me to essential articles on figuralism. To Christian 2acher, my gratitude -for your unfailing patience as I worked through and abandoned several dissertation topics. To Ann Dobyns 1 express my gratitude for your willingness to serve as a sounding board on allegory, and to John Gabel, likewise, on the topic of pseudonymity. To Stanley Kahrl, my thanks for your encouraging me to deliver three sections of this dissertation as papers at scholarly conferences, an exercise that was invaluable in forcing me to clarify my thoughts and tighten my arguments. Finally, to Edward Corbett, thank you for being an all-round pain and keeping my nose, for the most part, to the grindstone. VITA June 7, 1955 ...........................................Born - Glen Ridge, New Jersey 1977 ................................ ........................ B.A., Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island 1982 .................................................... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1985-Present ........... Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELD OF STUDY Medieval English Literature i v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i i i VITA................................................................................................................ iv CHAPTER PAGE 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................. 1 2. JEWISH APOCALYPSE....................................................... 10 3. EARLY CHRISTIAN APOCALYPSE ................................................... 34 4. THE SHIFT FROM PSEUDONYMITY....................................................74 5. THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS AND THE PASSION OF SAINTS PERPETUA AND FELICITAS ............................................................ 92 6. THE MARRIAGE OF ALLEGORY AND "REALISM" ..........................127 7. "REALISM" IN TWO OTHERWORLD VISIONS:TUNDALE AND EYNSHAM.....................................................................................158 8. PROLEGOMENON TO PIERS PLOWMAN..............................................194 NOTES.................................................................................................................213 WORKS CITED . ...................................................................................233 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Such scholars as Howard Patch* have traced certain elements that recur for over a millennium in visionary journeys to the otherworld. The evidence he and other scholars have amassed is testimony to the remarkable resiliency of the topoi of such accounts, but such scholarly studies by their very nature have two unfortunate effects. First, they divide the visions into small segments, in effect disguising their value as coherent literary texts by breaking down the boundaries between one vision and another in order to extract elements of interest. Rarely do we gain a sense of how the writer of a vision intends it to work as a coherent whole. Secondly, by focusing on the persistence of certain toooi such studies emphasize the resiliency of the tradition only in a conservative sense. The visions of the otherworld in fact exhibited a second type of resiliency, a protean ability to adapt themselves to new currents in medieval culture. This study will explore this hitherto neglected feature of the otherworld visions. It will neither methodically document the presence or absence of any given tooos nor will it attempt to elucidate changes in people/s beliefs about the otherworld by delineating changes in the details of torments or geographical 2 features. Instead, each vision addressed will be treated as a literary document in its own right, one informed by a unifying authorial intention. Simultaneously this study wi11 demonstrate how innovation co-existed with tradition by tracing the process through which each author manipulated inherited elements to suit the purposes suggested to him by contemporary conditions and needs. The visions deserve this kind of treatment if only because of their extraordinary popularity in their own day. Even if not to our taste, they successfully responded for over a millennium to their audiences's changing beliefs, desires and needs. And this success was not, I hope to show, merely the result of a morbid interest in gory scenes of torment or a fascination with the bizarre or exotic—for the otherworld is, of course, the ultimate in the exotic. Instead, an examination of two Christian innovations in particular will demonstrate that the otherworld visions were effective vehicles for exploring the here and now. First, the source of the otherworld visions, the Jewish apocalypse, frequently contained surveys of Israelite history in the guise of prophecy, but the Christian apocalypse, understandably enough, dropped this content. The loss of these historical surveys was sometimes accompanied by the abandonment of the convention of pseudonym!ty, which had provided the visions with authority by permitting £x eventu prophecy that had of course proved correct, written as it was after the fact. No 3 longer constrained by a conventional past setting, the otherworld Journey could be used to explore the spiritual crises experienced by contemporary men and women. But the elimination of pseudonymity created anew the problem of authority—the visionary has always been suspect. Writers began to surround these firs t- person narratives with details of the visionary/s life before and after rapture. The vision itself became one part of the story of an individual's salvation, and the visionary's successful struggle with a spiritual crisis that brings on a vision—and not the otherworld itself—was the subject of the account. Secondly, the visions always contained the seeds of allegorical interpretations, and such seeds came into full bloom as a result of the growing awareness that the nature of visionary experience implied that language could only imperfectly convey • what the visionary had apprehended. Some medieval authorities believed that a soul consigned to purgatory or hell, immaterial as it was and lacking a body whose senses were in communication with its soul, could not experience the torments in any material sense. Similarly, some argued that a rapt soul, immaterial and torn away from its material body, could not physically

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